Abstract
To become an expert in a technical domain means acquiring the tacit knowledge pertaining to the relevant domain of expertise, at least, according to the programme known as “Studies of Expertise and Experience” (SEE). We know only one way to acquire tacit knowledge and that is through some form of sustained social contact with the group that has it. Those who do not have such contact cannot acquire the expertise needed to make technical judgments. They can, however, use social expertise to judge between experts or expert claims. Where social expertise is used to make technical judgments we refer to it as “transmuted expertise”. The various kinds of transmuted expertise are described and analysed.
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Notes
Walton’s (1997) excellent historical overview reminds us that philosophers have tried to deal with the problem as to how non-experts can make sense of expert arguments and accounts for more than two millennia.
We are grateful to the Gabor Kutrovátz and Gabor Zemplen for pointing out to us that our Table 2 bears strong resemblance to Douglas Walton’s “6 critical questions” (Walton 1997: 223, see also Gelfert and Wagemans in this issue). As Goodwin (in this issue) observes, there is a great deal of overlap between SEE and work in argumentation studies though, as pointed out above, there are also differences.
See Collins (1999) for a similar argument in respect of the rejection of claims about the existence of gravitational waves.
See Selinger et al. (2011) for a debate about this point.
While we rely mainly on detailed research by Boyce (2007), the case is discussed in detail in Tindale’s paper in this issue.
This reflection on the relationship between sociology of scientific knowledge and transmuted expertise was initiated by Martin Weinel as part of his PhD project at Cardiff (Weinel 2011).
The empirical proof of this point within science studies actually goes back to 1975 if not further.
To know whether some phenomenon, “thargs”, exist one has to build a competent tharg detector. But to know whether a tharg detector is competent one has to examine its performance in the detection thargs. But to know whether its performance is competent one has to know whether or not it should find thargs when it is working properly. To know this one has to know whether or not thargs exist. But to know this one has to build a competent tharg detector. And so on.
The idea is that those with expertise in science studies ought to have a well established “understanding how science works” or some a well-developed “intelligence regarding science” (Kutrovátz 2010). It is not only professional sociologists who exercise such skills. For example, Lee Smolin’s (2006) critique of the current state of string theory is based on observation of its social development.
For example, there are continuing disputes in physics over the foundations of special relativity and the foundations of quantum theory but nearly all physicists simply ignore them; were they not to do so they would not be able to get on with their scientific lives.
The events are reported at greater length in Collins (2004: 366–367).
Shwed and Bearman’s (2010) approach to recognising and temporarily tracing genuine scientific controversies shows that a purely quantitative approach might work. It also demonstrates that quantitative analysts do not need to have specialist expertises in the fields under consideration. A less complicated, but equally effective approach has been employed by Collins and Pinch (1998[1993]) in their analysis of the “cold-fusion controversy”.
The existence of outlets for fringe scientific opinions is not bad in itself as some scientists involved in disputes with so-called “AIDS sceptics” correctly argue (see for example Nattrass 2010); such journals are important for a lively and open science. The existence of fringe journals only becomes a problem when outsiders involved in policy decisions fail to understand what they are. Mbeki, for example, described Current Medical Research and Opinion as “very senior” (Robertson et al. 2000).
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Rob Evans as well as the reviewers for exceptionally useful comments on this text.
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Collins, H., Weinel, M. Transmuted Expertise: How Technical Non-Experts Can Assess Experts and Expertise. Argumentation 25, 401–413 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-011-9217-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-011-9217-8